Enter your email to subscribe:

Guest columnist: Stephen Brier, labor historian, City University of New York

May Day, the international workers’ holiday, began in the U.S.A. Its roots go back to Chicago, in 1886.

After the Civil War, the nation’s factories and mines were growing fast. They employed hundreds of thousands of new immigrants – German, Irish, Mexican, Chinese, and eastern Europeans – and tens of thousands of African Americans who had just won their freedom. Workers toiled 12, 14, and even 16 hours a day, for miserable wages and in dangerous conditions. During frighteningly long depressions, thousands of working-class families couldn’t find work and often starved.

But business owners and the mainstream press blamed this widespread poverty on individual failure – and on the growing number of immigrant and black workers, who they claimed didn’t share traditional “American values.” Unions had to fight this tide of prejudice, racism and mindless worship of “free markets” as they organized workers.

The emerging labor movement united around a demand to shorten the working day to eight hours. One national labor organization called for a nationwide general strike on May 1st, 1886, if Congress did not act to establish an eight-hour day.

1886 was a year of strikes and militant labor action across the country. People called it “the Great Upheaval” – and Chicago was a center of protest. The city was home to a powerful anarchist movement that included Texas-born Albert Parsons, Lucy Parsons (who historians think had both African American and Mexican ancestors) and August Spies (a German immigrant). With thousands of other workers, they prepared to strike for the eight-hour day.

When May 1st dawned, 60,000 Chicago workers went out on strike. Two days later, with the strike gaining momentum, the Chicago police shot two strikers and wounded dozens more at the giant McCormick Reaper Works.

The anarchists organized a demonstration to protest the shootings, on May 4th in Chicago’s Haymarket Square. As that rally neared its end, 200 police entered the square and demanded that the remaining protesters disperse. From the darkness someone (whose identity has never been determined) threw a dynamite bomb, killing one policeman and wounding 70 others.

In the chaos and hysteria that followed, the authorities smashed Chicago’s labor movement. The Chicago police arrested anarchist leaders Albert Parsons and August Spies and six others and charged them with murder – even though there was no real evidence against them. They were convicted anyway, and four of them, including Parsons, were hanged in Nov. 1887.

After 1886, workers and labor radicals around the world began celebrating May 1stas a day of international working-class solidarity to demand the eight-hour day. In 1890, huge May Day demonstrations in the U.S., across Europe, and in Australia and Cuba demanded eight hours. The international labor movement denounced the frame-up of “the Haymarket martyrs” and demanded that those still in prison be freed. (They were pardoned by a pro-labor governor in 1893.)

American business leaders and the mainstream press wanted to distance the U.S. from May Day, because of its radical roots. With business support, in 1894 President Cleveland officially declared the first Monday in September as Labor Day.

Around the world, workers continued to celebrate May Day as International Workers Day. In the United States, especially after the Russian Revolution, this made-in-U.S.A. holiday was denounced as “un-American.” Regular celebrations of May Day continued anyway, notably in New York’s Union Square. But after the 1930s, the left in the labor movement came under sharper attack, and U.S. May Day celebrations grew smaller and smaller.

Today May Day is coming back to the country where it began. Millions of immigrant workers from Latin America, Asia and Africa have come to the United States, bringing their own experience in union struggles. They have always known that May Day is the workers’ day.

As more immigrants join the U.S. working class and organize for their rights, immigration laws have increasingly been used to fire union members and break up union drives . In response, the labor movement started speaking out in support of immigrants’ rights. In 1999 the AFL-CIO called for repealing the anti-immigrant law that makes work a crime. Instead, it called for legal status for the undocumented, reuniting immigrant families, and protecting organizing rights for everyone.

On May 1st, 2006, millions of immigrant workers poured into the streets in the Great American Boycott, walking off the job and marching against anti-immigrant legislation then being considered by Congress. Many unions supported this May Day protest, and others in the years that followed.

Today May Day belongs to us all. We march to demand equal labor rights and jobs for all. We march to carry forward the May Day tradition that began in 1886, and renew it for our new century.

Late in the week, the Arizona House passed a bill (Download HB2162~2) that attempts to calm concerns with the Arizona immigration law through a couple of relatively minor changes. For a description, click here. According to Wonk Room, Kris Kobach, the apparent author of the original bill and the architect of the recent changes, made the amendments in a way that arguably ensure sthat Arizona police can use the excuse of minor municipal housing code violations to inquire about immigration status.

I received the following response to the latest amendment to Senate Bill 1070 on behalf of UAgainst SB1070, a group made up of grad students from different colleges across the University of Arizona, from Doralina Skidmore a second year law student at the University of Arizona - James E. Rogers College of Law.

"HB2162 is not a victory for us. It is a defensive maneuver for anti-immigration advocates to strengthen the bill in court. The necessity of HB2162 shows that SB1070 was and remains flawed. The revisions of the bill are meant, as Pearce claims, to bolster the law, which remains motivated in hysterical nativism, racism and xenophobia. According to the AZStar: State Senator Pearce said that he does not believe the changes in the bill will make it harder for an officer to question someone who is suspected of being an illegal immigrant. "The reason we made these clarifications is to make it a stronger case in court," he said. "This is a tough bill. We didn't water it down."

Despite HB2162 UofA PD officers will still have the authority to enforce immigration violations on campus. Though they will not de jure be allowed to use race as a factor for determining legality, we don’t want legality to be being determined on campus at all. We don’t want students, staff or faculty to suffer the question of legality (of legal presence) on campus, a space that should be dedicated to liberty and active, unfettered intellectual pursuit.

Despite HB2162, UofA PD officers will still have the “authority to conduct warrantless arrests of persons for whom the officer has probable cause to believe have committed any public offense that makes those persons deportable.”

Specific facts constituting reasonable suspicion, for which officers may stop, detain or arrest potential illegal aliens include: “evasive, nervous, or erratic behavior; dress or speech indicating foreign citizenship; and presence in an area known to contain a concentration of illegal aliens.” Dress or speech indicating foreign citizenship? With the ability to enforce immigration crimes, UofA Police officers will be able to identify suspicion not by color or race but by dress or speech? The problem remains that our campus will be patrolled for violations which are inappropriately defined and enforced in a University environment.

Despite HB2162, the tensions between races, between documented and undocumented, will continue to foment, will continue to create an atmosphere of suspicion and xenophobia.

Despite HB2162, citizens and legal residents may still sue police officers for not fulfilling their duty of enforcing immigration violations.

Just today, as reported in the AZStar, fear remains escalated in Phoenix as Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio launched his latest crime and immigration sweep on Thursday. The sweep was accomplished with 200 deputies and posse volunteers.

We do not want immigration officers or posse volunteers sweeping onto our campus. We want our campus to remain free of anxiety for all people, for all students, faculty, staff and visitors of all nations, races, ethnicites and backgrounds. We do not want UofA Police enforcing immigration crimes, no matter the pretexts. We continue to urge President Shelton to publicly condemn SB1070! As well as its new wrapping, HB 2162!

We will resist as long as SB1070/HB 2162 exist!"

*****

It appears that Arizona does not want tio stay out of the news. Its efforts at reassigning teachers with accents and new prohibition on teaching ethnic studies (here, here, and here) are just another round of pokes in the eye to the state's Latina/os.

George Conk reports that the U.S. Court of Appeals, in an opinion by Judge Robert Katzmann, has vacated a criminal conviction because of ineffective assistance of counsel in deportation proceedings. The case is Cerna v. United States. A little over a month ago, Justice John Paul Stevens in Padilla v. United States held that a noncitizen could base an ineffective assistance claim on the failure to inform him of the immigration consequences of a plea bargain.

One week has passed since Arizona Governor Jan Brewer signed Senate Bill 1070 into law. Still, tensions continue to heighten over the law. The early suits challenging Senate Bill 1070 have been filed, with the first one brought by a local police officer. One cannot avoid hearing about the Arizona law on the television and radio news as well as in the newspapers and the net. Indeed, Larry King Live hosted a debate last night over the constitutionality of the law between New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson and former United States Attorney General Alberto Gonzalez. The Inter-American Commission for Human Rights (IACHR) has expressed deep concern over Arizona's new immigration law. CNN reports that college students are speaking out against the new law. May Day marches for immigrant rights likely will squarely confront the new Arizona law.

The New York Times published an op-ed [Wednesday] by Mr. Kris. W. Kobach, who helped write the new anti-immigrant law in Arizona.

Mr. Kobach was helpful enough to take the main arguments being made against the law and share his interpretations. We can only assume that his points will form the basis for legal arguments made when the lawsuits hit the courts.

So let’s take a look at each of Mr. Kobach’s legal defenses of the Arizona law:

Arizona just passed a state law that complements the federal one. According to federal law, all immigrants have to carry their papeles. Mr. Kobach is right on this. The federal law is flawed. It creates a two-tier system of humanity in this country—citizens and noncitizens—and does nothing to acknowledge that capital is allowed to move across borders while common, decent people are harassed, demonized and locked up like animals. Where Arizona had an opportunity to say, “Let’s make state laws that are decent and humane and show those feds how wrong they are,” state officials said, “Hey that flawed federal law is a great idea. The more hate the merrier.”

The courts have said reasonable suspicion is ok. Mr. Kobach points out that he didn’t make up the notion of reasonable suspicion and that courts have given cops the go ahead in this matter. That’s right. Just ask any Black man in New Jersey driving a Mercedes and they’ll be happy to tell you how “reasonable suspicion” works in the real world. Of course, reasonable suspicion has been used to explain why Arab men are more likely to get stopped at airports. “Well, he was brown, his name is Hussein, he seemed unhappy when I asked him questions, and oh, yeah he was at the airport…”

Cops won’t be able to consider race as the only factor. Mr. Kobach argues that the new law says police can’t ask you for ID just because you have brown skin. But they can ask you for ID because you have brown skin and are driving a beat up-Buick near a spot where daylaborers are picked up for work. Mr. Kobach’s argument is eerily similar to the old one that says, “We’re not denying you the right to vote because you’re Black—just because you’re Black and you can’t recite the entire Constitution.”

A cop has to assume you’re undocumented if you don’t have a drivers’ license in your wallet. Arizona doesn’t require locals to walk, breathe and text with a driver’s license in their wallet. But, notes Mr. Kobach, if you can’t produce that ID, a cop is safe to presume that you’re undocumented. Why? Because, Mr. Kobach tells us, Arizona gives driver’s licenses to citizens and immigrants with legal status. Huh? Yes, his argument doesn’t make any sense. The reality is that in the new Arizona a Latino teenager forgets his wallet at home, gets pulled over by a cop, can’t remember his social security number, and ends up being handed over to immigration officials.

As long as Congress has said otherwise, a state can do whatever it wants. Mr. Kobach is right here. Immigration is a federal matter but states can pretty much do what they want as long as Congress hasn’t said it’s a no-no. Mr. Kobach cites here the fact that the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit agreed that Arizona could punish people who knowingly hired undocumented workers. The law didn’t conflict with a federal one.

In sum, the Arizona law shows us when we fail to act at the federal level on immigration the doors are left open for the creation of police states where brown people are singled out to carry identification papers or face jail time. And all of this will be done legally—by state law.

In a sudden about-face last week, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) reversed its position on an interpretation of law which drastically increased immigrants’ vulnerability to deportation. In a brief filed on April 21, DHS urged the Board of Immigration Appeals (BIA) to modify an existing precedent decision in a pending BIA case, Matter of Alyazji. The modification, which reflects the reasoning of amicus curiae, the American Immigration Council’s Legal Action Center, limits when an immigrant could be ordered deported for certain past crimes.

The case deals with a provision of the Immigration and Nationality Act, § 237(a)(2)(A)(i) that causes an immigrant to be deportable if he or she is convicted of a crime involving moral turpitude (CIMT) committed 1) within five years after the date of admission and 2) for which a sentence of one year or longer may be imposed. The meaning of the word “admission” is at the crux of the debate. Matter of Shanu, the BIA precedent decision at issue in this case, held that “admission” could also mean “adjustment of status.” That means that even after a person is admitted and has lived in the U.S. for five years, his or her later adjustment of status to lawful permanent resident could restart the five-year clock. Thus, under Matter of Shanu, a person could live in the U.S. for many more than five years and continue to be vulnerable to removal for conviction of a CIMT.

The Board’s decision in Matter of Shanu undermines Congress’s intent that only people who turn to crime soon after arrival in the U.S. should be deported. As the Seventh Circuit reasoned in a case that rejected Matter of Shanu, “[q]uickly turning to crime can be revealing about character, if not about the real reason for coming to the United States.” However, if adjustment of status were to restart the five year clock, a person with a clean record who adjusts status more than 5 years after his or her initial lawful admission to the U.S. could be deported. Stretching this vulnerability to removal beyond five years after an initial lawful admission was not Congress’ intent.

In addition, Matter of Shanu allows an Immigration Judge to choose between the earlier lawful admission date and the later adjustment of status date. As the Ninth Circuit pointed out, an Immigration Judge who is able to choose among different dates for purposes of determining removability, would exercise “unbounded discretion with disparate effects and drastic immigration consequences.” This unfettered discretion would produce unfair results, where immigrants with similar patterns of admission and subsequent adjustment of status could either be removed from the U.S. or remain as lawful permanent residents at the whim of the Immigration Judge. Click here for the rest of the piece.

Here is a new feature on Operation Streamline from the Migration Information Source. Operation Streamline targets illegal border-crossers in portions of five Southwest border sectors, referring virtually all of those apprehended for prosecution. Arizona Senators John McCain and Jon Kyl recently published a border-security plan that requests more federal funding for Operation Streamline in their home state, which just passed a controversial immigration enforcement law.

Donald Kerwin and Kristen McCabe report the following:

• Prosecutions for immigration offenses reached an all-time high of nearly 92,000 in 2009 — 54 percent of all federal prosecutions that year — compared to under 6,000 in 1994, when immigration-related prosecutions were only about 9 percent of the total.

• The government may be starting to shift its prosecution priorities: more serious immigration offenses accounted for a greater proportion of prosecutions during the first three months of 2010.

• DHS sees decreased apprehensions in participating sectors as a sign that the program is working. But flows may have moved. Apprehensions in the San Diego sector — not part of Operation Streamline — increased 14 percent from 2006 to 2008.

State senators approved legislation aimed at the curbing the ethnic-studies program in Tucson Unified School District.

HB 2281 would make it illegal for a school district to have any courses or classes that promote the overthrow of the U.S. government, are designed primarily for students of a particular ethnic group or advocate ethnic solidarity "instead of the treatment of pupils as individuals."

It also would ban classes that "promote resentment toward a race or class of people."

Sen. Linda Lopez, D-Tucson, said the legislation is little more than a thinly disguised effort to quash a program TUSD officials have said was proven academically successful.

According to TUSD officials, the program in the district's Mexican-American studies department simply provides historical information, which conflicts with state School Superintendent Tom Horne's assessment the program is promoting racial hatred and "ethnic chauvinism."

District officials insisted earlier this year nothing in the program would violate the legislation, if it were to become law.

But Lopez said teachers in the program have told her the measure would affect how they can teach history. Beyond that, she said this level of legislative intervention into how subjects can be taught is academically a bad idea. Click here for the rest of the story.

President Bill Clinton spoke at the Peterson Foundation Fiscal Summit in Washington, D.C., about how he would advocate for fiscal responsibility were he running for office in 2010. His big pitch boils down to two ideas: (1) the future and (2) immigrants.

Here were his self-transcribed (read: rough, but directionally accurate) statements.

On reducing the deficit

"The end result works. Look what happened to Bill Clinton. America has got to get back into the future business. We can't do it if we keep mortgaging our future to other countries ... to our children and grandchildren. Then I'll tell them I'll be careful. I'll do everything I can to help the old and the poor and we have to change the way we do health care.

"We need more immigrants. We need to reverse the age ratio. I see that as part of fiscal responsibility. [Congress] need to pass something. I don't like that Arizona bill, but I get why it happened. It's horrible what happening along the border."

"The great virtue of this country, the thing we have over China and India is that we have somebody from everywhere here, and they do well. This country still works for immigrants. The reason there is anti-immigrant sentiment is white-collar factory workers got killed in the last decade. The burdens of the last decade's economic downturn was basically on white male high school grads, or who didn't graduate from high school or a couple years of college, who got shivered in this economy. Their taxes can be lower if we get more taxpayers. The changes we make will be less draconian if we get more people into the system. I don't think there's any alternative than to increase immigration. I don't see any kinda way out of this unless that's part of the strategy." Click here for the rest of the piece.

More Americans believe that Hispanics are the targets of a lot of discrimination in American society than say the same about any other major racial or ethnic group, according to a Pew Research Center survey taken prior to the recent enactment of an immigration enforcement law by the state of Arizona. These findings from the Pew Research Center's November 2009 survey are included in a new fact sheet released today by the Pew Hispanic Center. The fact sheet also covers a range of issues, attitudes and trends related to the new Arizona measure and its potential impact on the Latino community and on the enforcement of the nation's immigration laws, including the prevalence of deportation worries among Hispanics, confidence in the police, and views of immigration enforcement. The fact sheet, Hispanics and Arizona's New Immigration Law, is available at the Pew Hispanic Center's website.

There is lots of competition these days for this award but, Representative Duncan Hunter (R-CA) has earned it with his public call at a Tea Party rally for the deportation of U.S. citizen children of undocumented immigrants. Watch the video!

The Truth-O-Meter on PolitiFact.Com critically scrutinizes two alternate views of the Arizona immigration law -- one from an opponent earns a Mostly True, while the other, from a supporter, rates a False.

CongressDailyreports that House Democrats have called on their Senate counterparts to move on comprehensive immigration reform as soon as possible. Key Senate Democrats are circulating a 26-page outline (PDF) of a border security and immigration reform bill, which calls for securing the border before giving illegal immigrants in the country legal status. The draft s being circulated by Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nevada) along with Sens. Charles Schumer (D-NY), and Robert Menendez (D-NJ.). It would increase fines on employers who knowingly hire undocumentedl immigrants, require workers to carry a biometric identification card, and create a federal commission to recommend visa levels.

The call for action came mainly from members of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus and Congressional Black Caucus.

Manuel Giner of Phoenix, Arizona, a student at Yale Law School and chair of the Latino Law Students Association, offers an "inside look" at the politics in Arizona leading to the passage of Senate Bill 1070.

The Middletown Journal in Middletown, Ohio reminds us of the reasons why local police involvement in immigration enforcement, like that required by the new Arizona law, may not be so great an idea.

AP PHOTO

Here Butler County Sheriff Richard Jones stands next to a sign he had placed in the parking lot of the Butler County Sheriff's Department.

The newspaper reports that "An undocumented immigrant worker who sued Butler County Sheriff Richard K. Jones for violating his constitutional rights has been awarded $100,000 in a settlement agreement. The settlement filed in U.S. District Court stems from the 2007 arrest of Luis Rodriguez, 44, formerly of Lebanon, when he and others were rounded by at a Port Union Road construction site by Butler County deputies and a former immigration specialist hired by Jones. Officials said they were at the site to talk to a supervisor about undocumented workers, but Rodriguez and more than 20 others were interrogated and asked to provide identification, according to Rodriguez’s attorney, Al Gerhardstein . . . . Gerhardstein said his client, who had lived in Butler County for 11 years, was arrested and charged with providing a false identification and deported to Mexico, though he was later acquitted of the charge."

Here are three new immigration articles from the Social Science Research Network (www.ssrn.com)::

"Natural (Native) Born Citizen Defined: Before and After the Fourteenth Amendment" DAN GOODMAN. ABSTRACT: Before the Fourteenth Amendment, the governments of the several States were considered separate and distinct sovereignties from each other as well as from the government of the United States. After the Fourteenth Amendment, the governments of the several states are still considered separate and distinct sovereignties from each other as well as from the government of the United States. Before the Fourteenth Amendment, a native born citizen was a citizen of a State, and a native born citizen of the United States, when aboard. Before the Fourteenth Amendment, an alien or foreigner could become a naturalized citizen of the United States or a naturalized citizen of a State. A naturalized citizen of the United States domiciled in a State, became a citizen of that State; that is, a citizen of the United States AS WELL AS a citizen of a State. A naturalized citizen of a State became also a citizen of the United States; that is, a citizen of a State AS WELL AS a citizen of the United States. Before the Fourteenth Amendment, a naturalized citizen of the United States and a naturalized citizen of a State were also a naturalized citizen of the United States, when aboard. Citizenship of the United States was established by the Supreme Court in the case of Dred Scott. Instead of distinguishing between a citizen of a State, under the constitution and laws of the individual State, and a citizen of a State, under the Constitution and laws of the United States, Chief Justice Tanney, in this case, made a distinction between a citizen of a State, under the constitution and laws of the individual State and a citizen of the United States under the Constitution and laws of the United States. Because of this, citizenship of the United States, became a constitutional reality, instead of being an international status. After the Fourteenth Amendment, citizenship of a State and citizenship of the United States were held to be separate and distinct by the Supreme Court in the Slaughterhouse Cases. That a citizen of a State was separate and distinct from a citizen of a United States. After the Fourteenth Amendment, a native born citizen is a citizen of a State, and a native born citizen of the several States, when aboard. After the Fourteenth Amendment, an alien or foreigner could become a naturalized citizen of the United States or a naturalized citizen of a State. A naturalized citizen of the United States residing in a State, becomes a citizen of that State; that is, a citizen of the United States AND a citizen of a State. A naturalized citizen of a State becomes also a citizen of the several States; that is, a citizen of a State AS WELL AS a citizen of the several States. After the Fourteenth Amendment, a naturalized citizen of the United States is a naturalized citizen of the United States, when aboard. After the Fourteenth Amendment, a naturalized citizen of a State is a naturalized citizen of the several States, when aboard. After the Fourteenth Amendment, a citizen of the United States is one who is born in the United States and not a State. And naturalized in the United States and not naturalized in a State. Regarding a foreign corporation, it is neither a citizen of the several States under Article IV, Section 2, Clause 1 of the Constitution of the United States (of America) nor a citizen of the United States under Section 1 of the Fourteenth Amendment. A corporation, before the Fourteenth Amendment, was not considered a citizen of a State, under the Constitution. After the Fourteenth Amendment, a corporation is neither considered a citizen of the several States, under Article IV, Section 2, Clause 1 of the Constitution of the United States (of America) nor a citizen of the United States under Section 1 of the Fourteenth Amendment.

"Persons and Citizens in Constitutional Thought" International Journal of Constitutional Law, Vol. 8, No. 1, pp. 9-29, 2010 LINDA S. BOSNIAK, Rutgers University School of Law, Camden. ABSTRACT: The ideas of citizenship and personhood have an ambiguous relationship in constitutional thought. Often, they are understood as aligned, even identical. Claims for “equal citizenship” and “democratic citizenship” are, in effect, claims on behalf of the rights and recognition of individuals qua persons. Frequently, however, citizenship and personhood are regarded as opposing concepts. Whereas citizenship references national belonging and its associated rights, personhood evokes the rights and dignity of individuals independent of national status. Personhood stands for the universal, in contrast to citizenship, which is ultimately exclusionary. Much of the ambiguity of the personhood-citizenship relationship results from the multivalence of the idea of citizenship itself. Analytically, the term is used to reference both re lations among already-presumed members of a political community and the process of constituting that community in the first instance. Normatively, citizenship is understood as committed to universalism within the community, but in its community-constitutive mode, it is associated with bounded national commitments. Idealized accounts treat citizenship as a concept that works to mediate between universality and boundedness and ultimately to accommodate them: in this view, that is precisely citizenship’s function and its value. Citizenship is thus represented as both the embodiment of the universal and as the framing precondition for it. In earlier work, I have shown that the accommodation of the universal and particular that citizenship purports to stand for is often unstable and internally contradictory. Here, I am interested in thinking about constitutional personhood’s own hang-ups. Personhood as a preferred basis for constitutional subject status raises as many questions as it answers, and in the context of constitutional thought, it promises much more than it can deliver. This essay sketches out some directions for a critical reading of the idea of “constitutional personhood.”

Mutual Recognition in European Immigration Policy: Harmonised Protection or Co-Ordinated Exclusion? T. John O'Dowd UCD School of Law in F.A.N.J. Goudappel, R. Oostland & H. Raulus (eds), The Future of Asylum in the European Union: Problems, Proposals and Human Rights (The Hague, Asser Press; 2010.) Abstract: The EU’s migration policy and the nature of the instruments adopted under it are likely to have an increasing impact on national migration controls, over the course of the recently adopted Stockholm Programme and beyond. Two recent examples have been the establishment of minimum procedural standards and the increasing application of the mutual recognition principle in relation to decisions on expulsion and refusal of entry to third-country nationals. This chapter examines the influences upon, and the impact of, Community measures in those two fields—in particular the Return Directive—and seeks to assess what each tells us about the political dynamics behind the development of EU policies and actions in these areas, particularly in the context of the Union’s search for legitimacy through public perception of its effectiveness in assisting in the achievement of key policy goals, even if the content of these remains determined largely by national politics and national policy. A key issue is the adequacy of the guarantees in Union law of effective judicial review of decisions on admission and return. This is particularly relevant to the extra-territorial activities of the Member States and the Union, through operations co-ordinated by FRONTEX for instance. The adequacy of legal safeguards applicable to that extra-territorial migration control is briefly considered. The chapter closes by considering the relevance of opinion amongst MEPs and of national public opinion in relation to the European contribution to migration policy and what developments in this field tell us about the changing nature of the executive order of the EU.

On Thursday, April 29, 2010 at 11:00 a.m. (MST), MALDEF, the American Civil Liberties Union, the ACLU of Arizona and the National Immigration Law Center (NILC) will hold a news conference on the steps of the State Capitol Executive Tower in Phoenix, Arizona to announce that they are preparing to challenge Arizona's extreme new law, which requires law enforcement to question people about their immigration status during everyday police encounters and criminalizes immigrants for failing to carry their "papers."

The unconstitutional law, the groups say, encourages racial profiling, endangers public safety and betrays American values. Speakers will include Thomas A. Saenz, MALDEF President and General Counsel; Alessandra Soler Meetze, Executive Director of the ACLU of Arizona; Dolores Huerta, co-founder of the United Farm Workers of America; Richard Chavez, civil rights leader; and Linda Ronstadt, multi-Grammy winning artist and human rights advocate.

Fifteen years ago, MALDEF, ACLU and NILC successfully challenged Proposition 187 in the state of California, where a voter-approved initiative required proof of legal status to access virtually all public services. The enactment of Prop 187, as it was commonly referred to, tore apart schools and communities across the state as fear and suspicion became pervasive, and the state wasted tens of millions of dollars defending a law ultimately struck down as unconstitutional.